When the U.S. seized $7 billion in central bank assets belonging to the Afghan people, we knew it would freeze the country’s economy and send millions of people to the brink of starvation.
What we didn’t know was that lawyers and lobbyists would begin jockeying for their piece of the pie, thanks to President Joe Biden’s decision to take half the money to settle lawsuits brought by the families of 9/11 victims.
Biden’s own Afghanistan counsel left the White House last month to resume representing some of these plaintiffs — setting himself up for a lucrative payday if he receives even a tiny percentage of the damages awarded.
There has been shamefully little media coverage of Biden’s economic warfare against the Afghan people. And now that a feeding frenzy has begun over these seized assets, The Intercept’s reporters are virtually alone in reporting on who stands to profit from a policy that is tantamount to mass murder.
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Seizing Afghanistan’s central bank funds has brought the country’s economic activity to a standstill. People have lost access to their own money held in banks. Workers are going without paychecks, and the currency has collapsed in value.
Adding insult to injury, Biden has announced that half of the seized funds will be used to settle 9/11 lawsuits, forcing ordinary people in one of the world’s poorest countries to pay for a crime they had nothing to do with.
But Afghanistan’s misery could be a windfall for the elite lawyers representing 9/11 families, including a counsel for the plaintiffs who served on Biden’s Afghanistan team just last year.
While the exact fee structure of the 9/11 cases is unknown, a payout based on a percentage of damages awarded could reach hundreds of millions of dollars for the lawyers involved.
